The people who claim “real estate value!” have just latched onto the simplest reason they can which aligns with their worldview.

The reasons I suspect companies are forcing return to office are more:

• shareholders don’t like unused assets, so they tell the ceo to “use it or lose it”
• the people who make the decision have the type of extroverted personality where they actually do work better in the office and they can’t fathom people being different
• the people who make the decision prefer to have the office full because it makes them feel more powerful. They can see the people they lord over.

We should handle it the same way we treat invasive animals 🙂

It would help all of their competitors. A non zero number of people would move from windows to each of the others.

Whether or not the number moving away from windows and on to each of the others is significant or not is a different matter.

The biggest thing helping Linux right now is Valve’s work improving the gaming experience, IMO.

Yeah, if anyone thinks this is bad, they haven’t seen what legit alcoholism is like.

It would look like maybe 15 caps per person, but they’d be caps of vodka handles.

I did the same thing and have the same attitude. I still watch what few Netflix shows are any good. They just aren’t getting any of my money any more 🙂

Tesla under pays compared to other car companies.

Now they’re all about open floor plans for collaboration (read: for squeezing more people in the same space).

Duck duck go has kept getting better and google has kept getting worse.

I find the results are pretty even now and often lean in DDG’s favour (but not always, obviously).

Because of this, I’ve set my default everywhere to DDG and give Google a whirl sometimes if that doesn’t work out for a specific search.

Nah. The managers prefer in-office and companies are addicted to “corporate culture” which they can’t control if you’re working from home.

It has nothing to do with firing people (unless you want the most competent people to quit) nor does it have anything to do with real estate (no company will try to help fix a collective action problem voluntarily unless the attempt gives good PR or profits)

It’s not commercial real estate. There’s no reason for a CEO to care about real estate. This is just the reason given by people who believe all companies only ever do things for the money. So they’ve made up a reason they think fits.

People keep bringing up real estate because everyone thinks the rich are evil and this move must be money related somehow.

Now, I too think they’re pretty rotten for the most part.

But returning to office is not about real estate.

Companies are ruthless and if they can increase profits at all, they will do pretty much anything to do so. Firing long-time workers, destroying the planet, etc. So if they had to destroy the real estate market to make more money, they would.

My point here is that if it was just about money, everyone would remain WFH. They could downsize the office, or even lease out the space to the companies that are returning to the office.

So then why are they doing it? It’s their preference. They prefer having their underlings in the building and enjoy seeing everyone from their corner office. They like feeling powerful which is harder to do when everyone who works for them is at home.

They might also have the kind of personality where they get more work done with others around, and they can’t imagine it being different for other people. Many high-up executives only got that far because they have very extroverted personalities.

Not everything a rich person does is strictly about money. Otherwise they wouldn’t buy mansions, supercars, private planes, etc. Apple wouldn’t have built the billion dollar donut office. They do these things because they’re powerful and want others to know.

It just comes down to whether or not the fuel saved is worth more than the sail maintenance. Hopefully it is.

Even when we had a few streaming services, we’d end up pirating some stuff that was available because we incorrectly assumed it wasn’t on one of them and it’s just too annoying to have to look up where something is every time.

So we’d tend to go the piracy route first if we were seeking something out and only use the streaming services if we knew off the top of our heads where something was.

When smartphones first took off, each new one was a large upgrade. But each passing year sees new phones being more and more iterative. There’s hardly any difference at all anymore between individual years.

I’m at the point now where I keep my phones until they break or stop getting security updates.

I feel like most people who get their news primarily through Facebook, are horribly misinformed.

So maybe this is a good thing?

Make sure you use it with Firefox. It works better.